Four-Arm Collaboration: Two Dual-Arm Robots Work Together to Maneuver Tethered Tools
This addresses a specific challenge in robotics for tasks involving tethered tools, but it is incremental as it builds on existing dual-arm manipulation methods.
The paper tackles the problem of dual-arm robots manipulating tethered tools by introducing a planner where an assistant robot helps manage cable tension and avoid collisions, enabling successful tool placements and handovers that would otherwise fail due to cable issues.
In this paper, we present a planner for a master dual-arm robot to manipulate tethered tools with an assistant dual-arm robot's help. The assistant robot provides assistance to the master robot by manipulating the tool cable and avoiding collisions. The provided assistance allows the master robot to perform tool placements on the robot workspace table to regrasp the tool, which would typically fail since the tool cable tension may change the tool positions. It also allows the master robot to perform tool handovers, which would normally cause entanglements or collisions with the cable and the environment without the assistance. Simulations and real-world experiments are performed to validate the proposed planner.